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French Sex Murders
Mondo Macabro // Unrated // June 28, 2005 // Region 0
List Price: $19.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Released internationally under a slew of different titles, 
Mondo Macabro has sifted through numerous different versions of the 1972 faux-giallo thriller French Sex Murders and compiled as complete a version of the film as possible -- maybe more complete than anything ever screened theatrically. The truth-in-advertising title sums up the plot well enough. A blonde bombshell of a Parisian hooker (Barbara Bouchet) is gruesomely murdered, and since the thieving Antoine Gottvalles, the last man believed to see her alive, has a reputation for being violent, the case seems open-and-close enough for Inspector Pontaine (Robert Sacchi). The suspect accidentally decapitates himself in a high-speed chase with police, so it seems like that's that. The only problem...? He dies half an hour into the movie, so there's obviously more to it than that, and sure enough... The parade of butchered hookers continues, and Pontaine takes a hard look at some of the other brothel-goers, hoping that trail will lead him to the identity of the murderer. Will Pontaine be able to stop the killer's reign of terror before he strikes again? Well, no, but since the movie opens with Pontaine chasing down the unseen-murderer to his death, obviously things work out in the end.
As a taut thriller and compelling mystery, French Sex Murders is a failure. As a fascinatingly strange European import...well,
that's probably why you're reading this review. French Sex Murders is an odd one, which is made clear from the get-go; the horrifically choppy editing in the opening sequence is bolstered by some goofy yet remarkably catchy music, culminating in a silhoutte jarringly plummeting from the Eiffel Tower. This is a movie where you'd need more than one finger to count all the decapitations, the first of which a half-hour in prompted me to scream "awesome!" at my television, something I promise I don't make a habit out of doing. Several of the death blows are repeated over and over, each time with the screen tinted a different color. All the usual exploitation elements are present and accounted for, including an ample amount of sex and nudity (one scene has a man slathering his tongue all over a hairy hooker, if you're into that sort of thing) and a good bit of gore.
French Sex Murders has all the right people behind it. The cast is headed by Robert Sacchi, the professional Humphrey Bogart lookalike who'd go onto star in the deservedly-titled The Man with Bogart's Face. Some other recognizable faces include the stunningly beautiful Evelyn Kraft (The Mighty Peking Man), Howard Vernon (The Sinister Dr. Orloff), Barbara Bouchet (Don't Torture a Duckling), as well as Anita Ekberg, Rosalba Neri, a stack
of other Eurocult mainstays that the IMDB lists, making it kind of redundant for me to do the same. Even behind the camera, French Sex Murders benefits from the likes of legendary exploitation producer Dick Randall, editor Bruno Mattei (the director of Hell of the Living Dead), Oscar-winning special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and composer Bruno Nicolai.
French Sex Murders may be a mediocre thriller, and it drags in the less surreally-strange middle chunk, but its intriguing cast and compelling oddity make this a movie worth seeking out for Eurocult completists.
Video: I guess the producers of The French Sex Murders didn't keep an uncut interpositive stored in a climate-controlled vault in the Rocky Mountains or whatever. Mondo Macabro set out to piece together as complete a version of the film as they possibly could, and accordingly, the 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation is a bit schizophrenic. Most of it falls anywhere from "pretty good" to "near perfect", but some scattered shots are jittery and heavily speckled, and a handful of others look like they've been culled from a low-resolution video master. Contrast and color saturation also vary depending on the scene. I'm sure it's a case of just using the best of what's available, and even though the end result is inconsistent, I'd think
giallo completists will still be pretty pleased.
Audio: A passable Dolby Digital mono soundtrack. No shimmering, crystalline highs or thunderous low-frequency rumbles, but the looped dialogue and Bruno Nicolai's score both come through alright, and that's all that really matters. Some of the lower quality video footage is accompanied by weaker audio too, occasionally prone to popping. Most of the movie is in English, but apparently in some portions, English dialogue was either never recorded or couldn't be unearthed, and those stretches are in French and subtitled.
Supplements: The French Sex Murders is the first installment in Mondo Macabro's "Dick Randall Collection", and the meatiest extra on this DVD is a half-hour documentary focusing on the late producer. Comprehensive and extremely entertaining, "The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall" interviews associates, friends, and family, interspersing clips from movies like The Ninja Strikes Back, The Girl in Room 2A, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Don't Open Till Christmas, Living Doll, and dwarven spy-thriller For Y'ur Height Only throughout. Randall didn't just nick ideas from popular American films,
and his stab at Italian giallo, The French Sex Murders, gets special mention. The interviews delve into how Randall wound up in the exploitation movie racket, how he met his wife, filling the gaps in a global market desperate for product, his profitable friendship with Bruce Lee, and how the film industry anymore is run by bean counters rather than eccentric dealmakers like Randall. This is a particularly well-done documentary and is very much worth taking the time to watch.
More directly related to The French Sex Murders, the DVD includes a fairly detailed set of production notes, a sizeable still gallery, and a pair of short deleted scenes. A four-minute reel of clips from other Mondo Macabro DVDs round out the extras.
Conclusion: In this hysterically dated giallo knockoff, a Humphrey Bogart lookalike skulks around Paris and tries to uncover the identity of a serial killer who scoops the eyeballs out hookers. Certainly not for everyone, but French Sex Murders is strange enough to snag my interest, and other viewers with offbeat tastes should get a kick out of it too. Recommended.
Mondo Macabro has sifted through numerous different versions of the 1972 faux-giallo thriller French Sex Murders and compiled as complete a version of the film as possible -- maybe more complete than anything ever screened theatrically. The truth-in-advertising title sums up the plot well enough. A blonde bombshell of a Parisian hooker (Barbara Bouchet) is gruesomely murdered, and since the thieving Antoine Gottvalles, the last man believed to see her alive, has a reputation for being violent, the case seems open-and-close enough for Inspector Pontaine (Robert Sacchi). The suspect accidentally decapitates himself in a high-speed chase with police, so it seems like that's that. The only problem...? He dies half an hour into the movie, so there's obviously more to it than that, and sure enough... The parade of butchered hookers continues, and Pontaine takes a hard look at some of the other brothel-goers, hoping that trail will lead him to the identity of the murderer. Will Pontaine be able to stop the killer's reign of terror before he strikes again? Well, no, but since the movie opens with Pontaine chasing down the unseen-murderer to his death, obviously things work out in the end. As a taut thriller and compelling mystery, French Sex Murders is a failure. As a fascinatingly strange European import...well,
that's probably why you're reading this review. French Sex Murders is an odd one, which is made clear from the get-go; the horrifically choppy editing in the opening sequence is bolstered by some goofy yet remarkably catchy music, culminating in a silhoutte jarringly plummeting from the Eiffel Tower. This is a movie where you'd need more than one finger to count all the decapitations, the first of which a half-hour in prompted me to scream "awesome!" at my television, something I promise I don't make a habit out of doing. Several of the death blows are repeated over and over, each time with the screen tinted a different color. All the usual exploitation elements are present and accounted for, including an ample amount of sex and nudity (one scene has a man slathering his tongue all over a hairy hooker, if you're into that sort of thing) and a good bit of gore. French Sex Murders has all the right people behind it. The cast is headed by Robert Sacchi, the professional Humphrey Bogart lookalike who'd go onto star in the deservedly-titled The Man with Bogart's Face. Some other recognizable faces include the stunningly beautiful Evelyn Kraft (The Mighty Peking Man), Howard Vernon (The Sinister Dr. Orloff), Barbara Bouchet (Don't Torture a Duckling), as well as Anita Ekberg, Rosalba Neri, a stack
of other Eurocult mainstays that the IMDB lists, making it kind of redundant for me to do the same. Even behind the camera, French Sex Murders benefits from the likes of legendary exploitation producer Dick Randall, editor Bruno Mattei (the director of Hell of the Living Dead), Oscar-winning special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and composer Bruno Nicolai. French Sex Murders may be a mediocre thriller, and it drags in the less surreally-strange middle chunk, but its intriguing cast and compelling oddity make this a movie worth seeking out for Eurocult completists.
Video: I guess the producers of The French Sex Murders didn't keep an uncut interpositive stored in a climate-controlled vault in the Rocky Mountains or whatever. Mondo Macabro set out to piece together as complete a version of the film as they possibly could, and accordingly, the 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation is a bit schizophrenic. Most of it falls anywhere from "pretty good" to "near perfect", but some scattered shots are jittery and heavily speckled, and a handful of others look like they've been culled from a low-resolution video master. Contrast and color saturation also vary depending on the scene. I'm sure it's a case of just using the best of what's available, and even though the end result is inconsistent, I'd think
giallo completists will still be pretty pleased. Audio: A passable Dolby Digital mono soundtrack. No shimmering, crystalline highs or thunderous low-frequency rumbles, but the looped dialogue and Bruno Nicolai's score both come through alright, and that's all that really matters. Some of the lower quality video footage is accompanied by weaker audio too, occasionally prone to popping. Most of the movie is in English, but apparently in some portions, English dialogue was either never recorded or couldn't be unearthed, and those stretches are in French and subtitled.
Supplements: The French Sex Murders is the first installment in Mondo Macabro's "Dick Randall Collection", and the meatiest extra on this DVD is a half-hour documentary focusing on the late producer. Comprehensive and extremely entertaining, "The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall" interviews associates, friends, and family, interspersing clips from movies like The Ninja Strikes Back, The Girl in Room 2A, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Don't Open Till Christmas, Living Doll, and dwarven spy-thriller For Y'ur Height Only throughout. Randall didn't just nick ideas from popular American films,
and his stab at Italian giallo, The French Sex Murders, gets special mention. The interviews delve into how Randall wound up in the exploitation movie racket, how he met his wife, filling the gaps in a global market desperate for product, his profitable friendship with Bruce Lee, and how the film industry anymore is run by bean counters rather than eccentric dealmakers like Randall. This is a particularly well-done documentary and is very much worth taking the time to watch. More directly related to The French Sex Murders, the DVD includes a fairly detailed set of production notes, a sizeable still gallery, and a pair of short deleted scenes. A four-minute reel of clips from other Mondo Macabro DVDs round out the extras.
Conclusion: In this hysterically dated giallo knockoff, a Humphrey Bogart lookalike skulks around Paris and tries to uncover the identity of a serial killer who scoops the eyeballs out hookers. Certainly not for everyone, but French Sex Murders is strange enough to snag my interest, and other viewers with offbeat tastes should get a kick out of it too. Recommended.
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